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Rants Aside, The Volt is Actually Earning Raves -- And it's a Hit

It’s election season, so it seems especially appropriate to recall the words of one of the most quotable politicians of the modern era, Ronald Reagan. As I read Patrick Michaels’ ”Notwithstanding GM’s Protests, No One Wants The Chevy Volt“, I couldn’t help but hear the voice of the late president saying, “There you go again.” After the flap over the bogus claim that Chevy is losing $50,000 per Volt, we now have the perhaps more bogus claim: No one wants the Volt at all, even though it is coming off its best sales month ever!

It turns out that Michaels is not only wrong, he’s fairly spectacularly wrong. The Volt is the 133rd most popular car sold in the U.S. out of 262 total through the first 8 months of 2012, according to Timothy Cain at Good Car, Bad Car. In other words, it’s the “median car” — half are more popular, half are less popular. Given that it’s an entirely new kind of vehicle, expensive and demonized by people with an often strange political agenda, that’s fairly remarkable.

What’s perhaps more remarkable is how closely sales of the Volt to date track the sales of the original Toyota Prius here in the U.S. GM sold 7,671 Volts here last year, while Toyota sold 5,562 Priuses in 2000 and 15,556 in 2001. If the rest of 2012 holds similar to the first 8 months, U.S. Volt sales will increase from the 13,497 to date up towards very approximately 20,000. Oh, and that Prius, barely a blip back in 2000? It’s now the 14th most popular car in the U.S. What’s that expression about oaks and acorns?

Against what is shaping up to be a very economically robust 15 million new auto sales in the U.S., (“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”; it seems the answer is increasingly yes, even though the long-term unemployed and those still underwater on their homes are still obviously in the no category) that’s still a drop in the bucket. But it’s a detectable, noticeable drop in said bucket.

And clearly, whatever fear of the Volt that runs rampant among some segment of climate-change deniers, government-bailout haters and whomever else fears the progress of this type of vehicle gets ramped up to new levels whenever anything resembling good news about the Volt emerges.

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I drive a Volt. Leasing makes sense because the benefit of the $7500 can be realized immediately v. at tax season the following year.

I have had my Volt for a little over 1 year. It has exceeded my expectations. I was worried about its efficiency because of my long commute (50-55 miles roundtrip/day) and the performance in both cold and warm weather (Michigan).

My overall average MPG was 104 for the year. My cost to charge per day was $1.41. So for the price of a coffee, I boosted my mileage from 23 (previous car) to 104.

I decided to buy, as I was able to get the entire $7500 back in one year. I’ve got about 11500mi on mine, 1100 of those on gasoline, so a bit over 90% electric. This car really is one of the best GM ever put out, and in the future will likely be considered in the same pantheon as the Corvette or the Tri-Fives as far as engineering and innovation go.

Finally, an article from somebody who actually understands the auto industry and how the Volt fits into the marketplace. Despite its detractors, the Volt is actually a large success and its sales (yes, sales) are impressive considering the new technology.

Unlike electronic goods like the iPhone, there has never been a single brand-new car nameplate that jumped to the best-sellers list shortly after launch. Cars are a mature market, and with the non-spontaneous nature of auto sales, it takes years for a brand to build market share. The trajectory of the Volt, as mentioned in the article, is on par with the Prius when it first came out 11 years ago.

Readers should know that some power copanies offer reduced rates for off peak charging. My power company charges 6 cents/kwh if I recharge during the night, so my Volt is set to recharge from 2-6AM. It costs 65 cents to fully recharge and my round trip to work costs about 45 cents. My Escape hybrid cost about $3 for the same trip. I used 450 gallons of gasoline/yr in the Escape and almost exactly 100 gallons in the first year with my Volt. My old Acura MDX used 750 gallons of gasoline to go the same number of miles. While I bought the Volt to use less gasoline, not to save money, the savings are nice.